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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 4
December 2006
Year of new boats documents trend to ‘bigger’
STONINGTON, ME – No, it’s not just your imagination. Lobster boats are getting bigger. A lot bigger.
Commercial Fisheries News has a unique vantage point for reaching that conclusion. Throughout the year, we cover launches of new boats in the Northeast region. Admittedly, we don’t get them all. But with the help of boat builders, many of whom are located in Maine, engine suppliers, and owners, we are on hand or follow up on a good portion of new boat launches in the region.
Lobster boats comprise the vast majority of launches we cover, though there’s a wide variety of other fisheries and uses represented, including scallopers, draggers, longliners, commercial rod and reel, tuna, urchin, and even conch fishing, as well as passenger, harbormaster, research, and enforcement duties.
In 1996, we began compiling a review of our new boat launches for the year, which we package in a CFN special supplement, sponsored by Furuno, that is included in our annual boat building focus in the December issue.
In that first year we published 55 lobster boat profiles. Of those 55 new lobster boats, eight of them – 14.5% – were 40' or greater in length.
Five years later in 2001, CFN reported the launch of 71 new lobster boats, with the number of 40-plus-footers having grown to 19, or 27% of the total.
The number of reported lobster boats launched in 2006 stood at 65, of which 30 were 40' or longer. At 46%, that’s closing in on half of all the new lobster boats launched these days being super-sized compared to the fleet’s history.
And if you suspected that engines are also getting bigger, you’d be right again. Diesel power in those eight large lobster boats launched in 1996 averaged 516 hp. The class of 2006 is packing 641 hp on average.
Broad abeam
Not only are lobster boats getting longer, they’re also gaining, disproportionately, in girth.
Let’s turn back a few pages in the history book of what we’ve come to know as “Downeast traditional” or “Beals Island” lobster boat design to take a look at a boat that Riley Beal designed and built for his grandson Dick Alley.
At 30'x9', the Lorna B was typical in size and proportion for the boats of its day when it was launched in 1973. The Lorna B is dwarfed by the fiberglass behemoths in today’s fleet and, with a length-to-width aspect ratio of 3.33:1, she’s also as skinny as a toothpick in comparison.
Over our 10-year observation span, lobstermen in the Northeast who were interested in having a big boat have always had a variety of choices from boat builders, primarily in Maine, and to a lesser degree, the Canadian Maritime provinces.
All during that time, models such as the Duffy 42 and 48 from Atlantic Boat Company, the Young Brothers 40, 42, and 45, the Wesmac 42 and 46, the Wayne Beal 40, the MDI 44, and the Osmond 40 and 42 from H&H Marine Inc. have been available to the market.
The length-to-width ratio of these models typically runs from 3:1 to slightly wider, that is, for every 3' of length there is 1' of width. The Osmond 40 (40'x14'10") figures out to 2.7:1, while the Wayne Beal 40, designed by Wayne’s brother, Calvin Beal Jr., hits 2.6:1 at 40'3"x15'5".
“I’d make them even wider if people would buy them,” prolific designer Calvin Beal Jr. told CFN when he began production of a line of models bearing his own name back in 1999.
As it turns out, they are, and he is.
New models
Those fishermen who were seeking even wider models found them in Canada. In 2001, a 45'x20' (2.25:1) lobster boat was built for a Rye, NH lobsterman. A 49'x22' (2.23:1) lobster boat/dragger joined the Beals Island fleet last year, and a 48'x20' (2.4:1) lobster boat was delivered to Cutler this year. All were built in Canada.
But Maine builders haven’t ignored the call for longer and wider boats, and several new models have hit the water in recent seasons. In 2000, RP Boat Shop in Steuben introduced the Willis Beal-designed RP 40, which at 40'x15' became an immediate popular choice.
About the same time, Webber’s Cove Boat Yard introduced a Carroll Lowell-designed “Blue Hill 42” (42'11"x15'2"), the mold for which was then acquired by Wesmac in Surry.
More recently, David McMahan, an enterprising lobsterman from Rockland, bought the mold. Marketing the boat as the “Lowell 43,” he has sold several copies that were laid up at Hutchinson Composites in Thomaston.
Another new hull out of Hutchinson Composites is a hard chine 42'x14'9" design, reminiscent of the Wesmac 42, by Tom Bernardi of Waldoboro. Wesmac has added 50' and 54' models to the top of its line.
Meanwhile, H&H Marine has begun offering its Osmond 42 in custom widths from the original standard of 15'3" out to 16'8" and has announced plans for a new Osmond 46 with a 19' beam, bringing its total line of models up to an even dozen.
Not to be outdone, Wayne Beal’s Boat Shop now has a mold for a 46'x17'6" model, and Young Brothers Inc. in Corea is taking orders for its newest 48'x16' Ernest Libby design.
Bigger shop door
Calvin Beal Jr. has capped his namesake line with a 44'x17' offering and has sold several copies already this year.
“It’s actually 17 feet 8 inches wide with the rub rails,” said Ken Ryan of PenBay Boat Company in Sedgwick, where the most recent Calvin Beal 44 was recently finished for a Vinalhaven lobsterman.
That’s wide enough so that PenBay had to buy a new, 18' wide overhead door for the boat to squeeze inside the shop. Wide enough so that it would not fit into the travel lift at Billings Diesel & Marine in Stonington, PenBay’s customary launching site, and had to be trucked overland to Journey’s End Marina in Rockland on launch day.
It’s the largest boat ever to come out of his shop, according to Ryan, who doubts they will ever do a larger one.
“We’re done buying new doors,” he said.
Steve Curtis
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